Jane Harman Leaves Congress, Obama Meets the Chamber of Commerce and More in Capital Eye Opener: February 8

Your daily dose of news and tidbits from the world of money and politics:

REP. JANE HARMAN LEAVES CONGRESS TO LEAD WOODROW WILSON CENTER

Rep. Jane Harman (D-Calif.) is expected to announce today that she will be leaving Congress to take the reins at a Washington-based think-tank, the Woodrow Wilson Center, but her departure certainly won’t be for the money.

Harman, a member of the Blue Dog Coalition, is estimated to be the second wealthiest member of both the House of Representatives and Congress as a whole. Only Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) is wealthier than Harman.

Harman, who has served in Congress from 1993 to 1999 and 2001 to the present, has assets totaling in the hundreds of millions, according to Center for Responsive Politics research on personal financial disclosures. Because of the limitations of federal disclosure requirements, it is impossible to pinpoint her exact worth. But it is between a minimum of about $150 million and a maximum of about $435 million. The average between those two figures is a sizable $293 million.

More than 90 percent of her investments are in the communications sector. This is hardly surprising, as her husband is Sidney Harman, who made his mark in the audio equipment business and who also purchased Newsweek from the Washington Post Company in August.

Not all of Harman’s interests are in the communications sector. As OpenSecrets Blog noted in February 2010, Harman recused herself from House committee hearings on Toyota vehicle safety because she and her husband reported owning between $116,003 and $315,000 worth of Toyota stock in 2008. However, her most recent personal financial disclosures from 2009 report $0 in Toyota stock.

While California’s 36th Congressional District is reliably safe Democratic territory, Harman has nonetheless raised significant funds during her career from a variety of interest groups. The industries and special interest areas to donate the most money to her campaign committee are pro-Israel and retiree groups, who during the 2010 election cycle contributed $77,450 and $69,150 respectively.

Harman is also a prolific fund-raiser for other political candidates. Her leadership PAC, SecureUS, has supported other members of the centrist-to-conservative Blue Dog Coalition. However, of the 13 members of the 111th Congress who benefited from the support of SecureUS, only two – Rep. Gabrielle Giffords (D-Ariz.) and Rep. Loretta Sanchez (D-Calif.) – were re-elected in 2010.

OBAMA SENDS OLIVE BRANCH (BUT NO FRUIT CAKE) TO CHAMBER OF COMMERCE IN SPEECHPresident Barack Obama reached out to the Chamber of Commerce in a speech Monday, quipping “I’m here in the interest of being more neighborly…Maybe if we had brought over a fruit cake when we first moved in, we would have got off to a better start. But we’re going to make up for it.”

The president and the Chamber have often had an antagonisticrelationship. The Chamber’s campaign contributions mirrors its ill will toward Democrats. During the 2010 election cycle, House Democrats received only $7,000 in contributions compared to the $22,500 House Republicans received. Likewise, Senate Democrats received a paltry $5,000 compared to $65,500 for Senate Republicans.

But the Chamber packs more of a punch in outside spending that benefits candidates not through direct donations, but various communications on behalf of candidates.

During the 2010 election cycle, it poured tens of millions of dollars into various races, running ads for and against political candidates. For example, it spent more than $4.9 million in the California Senate race between Sen. Barbara Boxer (D) and Republican Carly Fiorina and about $2 million in the Colorado Senate race between Sen. Michael Bennet (D) and Republican Ken Buck. The Chamber was not required by law to acknowledge which candidates it was supporting or opposing in its messaging, because it did not overtly direct voters to vote for one candidate over another. But most of its ads last election cycle cast Republican candidates in a positive light or Democrats in a negative light.

Furthermore in 2010, the Chamber spent more than $132 million on lobbying efforts. This figure was down from about $144.5 million in 2009. Its 2010 lobbying focused primarily on financial issues of various sorts.

Chamber lobbyists were busy visiting all parts the federal government last year, the Center’s research shows. They focused significant time on Capitol Hill and also lobbied the Securities and Exchange Commission; departments of Treasury, Commerce, Justice, Health and Human Services, Defense, Energy, State, Transportation and Homeland Security; the Environmental Protection Agency; the Federal Reserve; the Patent and Trademark Office and the White House.

KOCH BROTHERS TAKE CENTER STAGE IN THE HOUSE

Koch Industries has made its mark on the new House of Representatives, particularly in the House Energy and Commerce Committee, according to a Los Angeles Times article. The second-largest private company in the United States, Koch Industries contributed to 27 members of the Energy and Commerce Committee, exactly half of its 54 members. Of those 27, only five are Democrats.

Citing Center for Responsive P0litics research, the L.A. Times noted that the committee chairman, Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.), received $20,000 in contributions from Koch employees, making them one of his top 10 contributors. Upton has taken a firm deregulatory stance toward the Environmental Protection Agency. “The Kochs’ oil refineries and chemical plants stand to pay millions to reduce air pollution under currently proposed EPA regulations,” wrote the article’s authors Tom Hamburger, Kathleen Hennessey and Neela Banerjee.

The Wichita, Kan.-based company made its most significant contributions to Republican congressmen Mike Pompeo, Jerry Moran and Todd Tiahrt, all of Kansas. Pompeo serves on the Energy and Commerce Committee.

During the 2010 election cycle, people and political action committees associated with Koch Industries heavily favored Republican candidates, donating more than $1.4 million to Republicans, or about 92 percent of all contributions. Koch-founded Americans for Prosperity also spent millions of dollars on various races across the country, with the ads primarily supporting Republicans or opposing Democrats.

The company is also a familiar lobbying presence. In 2010, it spent more than $8 million on lobbying efforts, more than the embattled BP, another company within the oil and gas industry. This sum is smaller than the roughly $20 million it spent on lobbying in 2008 and $12.4 million in 2009.

For more information on Koch Industries, and for a comparison with left-leaning George Soros, often seen as David and Charles Koch’s ideological rival, see OpenSecrets Blog‘s assessment from last year.

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